Google on Wednesday announced that Gmail will stop supporting older Chrome versions by the end of this year. The company also confirmed that Gmail users who are still on Windows XP and Windows Vista are the most likely to be affected.
On Feb. 8, Google will start showing a banner at the top of Gmail for users who are still on Chrome version 53 and below encouraging them to upgrade. Chrome 55, the latest version of the browser, contains "several important security updates" you'll want as you surf the Web, Google says.
According to Google, the Chrome browser’s versions lower than 53 are open to security risks, mainly because Microsft had stopped the OS support for Windows XP and Vista. This means that if you are still using Chrome v53 or lower, be ready to likely get affected by attacks. Moreover, there will be no bug fixes or security patches available to you. According to Google, you will be able to continue using the Chrome browser till the end of the year, but it will be in the basic HTML version only. Google wrote on the blog, “Gmail users that are still on Windows XP and Windows Vista are the most likely to be affected because v49 was the last released version which supported those operating systems.”
For now, Gmail will continue to function on Chrome browser version 53 and below through the end of the year. Chrome users who remain on older versions could be redirected to the basic HTML version of Gmail as early as December 2017. Also in another update google says it will start blocking javascript from February 13 as they have the risk of triggering a malicious download.
"Google does not typically announce when we discontinue support for older versions of Chrome browser because of our current supported browser policy, which states that only the most recent versions of Chrome is supported. This announcement was made given the expected impact on Windows XP and Windows Vista users and known security risks," the company said in an announcement post.
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